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GDPR in hand

Markku Brask

According to statistics from Finland, only 40% of the mid-sized companies have a clue what to do when GDPR hits the fan. And smaller ones even less. So in 6 months' time, there'll be some hassle around this issue. I’m no legal expert in the matter, but I've heard the basic principles on how GDPR will hit the companies. And as there are some serious monetary punishments in play, it seems that at least 40% are interested in staying on the safe side.

One very concrete thing which touches everyone is how we should handle our business emails from May 2018. Below I'll insert a picture of the mailbox's content — not the frames around it — just the content, of how it should look from my point of view:

Why's that? An example: Let’s assume you're employed by a company which has 300 employees. And every employee has a business email account. And customers, partners, other employees etc are sending emails to you. So you've a lot of information stored there about those people. And every single person of those 300 have different emails and different information. Maybe some even have folders of where to store emails, on their local computer. And there are hundreds of different ways to do this.

So then the customer calls and wants to have all the information you've stored to be forwarded to her/him. Or she/he asks you to delete all the information you've got in your company, because the customer relationship has ended. (Actually, you need to be able to do that without the customer asking, once the business relationship has come to an end.) Can this be done easily with all the personal mailboxes? No, it can’t.

So please, share your thoughts on how you plan to tackle this email issue of the GDPR! Let’s share so we can learn from each other.